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Essays on Metaphysics and Epistemology, by Michael Devitt Suikkanen, Jussi University of Birmingham Putting metaphysics first: essays on metaphysics and epistemology, by Michael Devitt Suikkanen, Jussi DOI: 10.1093/mind/fzu165 License: None: All rights reserved Document Version Peer reviewed version Citation for published version (Harvard): Suikkanen, J 2015, 'Putting metaphysics first: essays on metaphysics and epistemology, by Michael Devitt', Mind, vol. 124, no. 493, pp. 327-331. https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/fzu165 Link to publication on Research at Birmingham portal General rights Unless a licence is specified above, all rights (including copyright and moral rights) in this document are retained by the authors and/or the copyright holders. The express permission of the copyright holder must be obtained for any use of this material other than for purposes permitted by law. •Users may freely distribute the URL that is used to identify this publication. •Users may download and/or print one copy of the publication from the University of Birmingham research portal for the purpose of private study or non-commercial research. •User may use extracts from the document in line with the concept of ‘fair dealing’ under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (?) •Users may not further distribute the material nor use it for the purposes of commercial gain. Where a licence is displayed above, please note the terms and conditions of the licence govern your use of this document. When citing, please reference the published version. Take down policy While the University of Birmingham exercises care and attention in making items available there are rare occasions when an item has been uploaded in error or has been deemed to be commercially or otherwise sensitive. If you believe that this is the case for this document, please contact [email protected] providing details and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate. Download date: 02. Oct. 2021 Putting Metaphysics First: Essays on Metaphysics and Epistemology, by Michael Devitt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Pp. x + 346. H/b £55.00, P/b £27.50. Final Author Copy: to be published in Mind. Michael Devitt’s recent book Putting Metaphysics First collects together fifteen of his previously published articles on metaphysics and epistemology. I will first explain the basic crux of these articles, then give high praise for the volume, and finally raise a concern about his way of distinguishing antirealist views from realism in a given domain. The first chapter argues against David Armstrong’s realism about universals. It first explains why the One over Many argument is a pseudo-problem. Besides a basic story about how a given predicate ‘F’ can apply to many F things, no further explanation is needed for why objects a and b are F, and therefore no universals are needed to do explanatory work. Devitt then argues that, if there are any problems for the nominalists in this ballpark, these have to do with the need to provide translations of our talk about the properties of properties to a language that doesn’t require the existence of universals. Chapters 2 to 6 defend scientific and common sense realism. Devitt’s realism in these domains has two dimensions: (i) the objects posited by science and common sense exist and (ii) their existence is ‘mind-independent’. On this view, electrons, muons, stones and cats exist independently of our concepts, theories, language, judgments and the like. Devitt’s main thesis is that we should not approach the questions about the existence of these objects through semantic views about linguistic meaning, reference and truth as it is often done. Rather, following the title of the book, we should put metaphysics first. The main argument for this thesis is that semantic views (for instance, about the nature of truth) are compatible with a variety of metaphysical views (and vice-versa), and furthermore through science we know much more about the existence and nature of entities directly than we know about the word to world relations investigated in semantics. These chapters then correct mistakes often made in the realism debates (ch. 2); argue that there are no sound arguments from the sceptical worries about how our theories are underdetermined by evidence to antirealism in metaphysics (ch. 3); defend an argument for scientific realism based on the success of scientific methodology and oppose pessimistic metainductions in science (ch. 4); criticise the popular combination of scientific constructivism and theory incommensurability often motivated by descriptivist views about reference (ch. 5); and challenge global response dependence views on the basis that they lead to bizarre forms of worldmaking (ch. 6). Chapter 7 considers how sophisticated antirealist, nonfactualist views can be distinguished from realist views in different domains even if both views accept the same claims about what there is. According to Devitt, the key to solving this problem is that realists will always make at least some claims about the nature and causal role of the relevant entities which the nonfactualists cannot accept. Chapter 8 applies this view to the debates about truth. Devitt claims that deflationism should be understood both as a semantic view about the truth term and as a metaphysical rejection of the explanatory claims which correspondence theorists make about the nature and causal role of the truth property. Similarly, chapter 9 defends naturalist moral realism in metaethics. On this view, some things are objectively right and wrong, and furthermore we can both give informative non-reductive accounts of the nature of the moral reality and rely on this reality in good scientific explanations given suitable background assumptions. In the two chapters on philosophy of biology (10 and 11), Devitt insists that we must first distinguish between questions on two levels. First, we can ask in virtue of what properties is a given organism a member of a species F (the taxa problem). Second, we can ask a higher-order question in virtue of what are Fs a species for example rather than a subspecies or a genus (the category problem). Devitt opposes the mainstream views in this domain by arguing that an organism belongs to a species in virtue of its intrinsic underlying properties, namely genetic ones. He then answers the separate higher-order question by claiming that at least some historically motivated species taxonomies are different in that they can play a useful explanatory role in biological evolutionary sciences, whereas other types of species taxonomies and also higher categories are not natural kinds in the same sense. Chapters 12 and 13 defend naturalism in epistemology. This is the thesis that there is only one empirical way of knowing and as a result there is no such a thing as a priori knowledge. Devitt offers two arguments for this thesis: the holistic nature of confirmation a la Quine and the general obscurity of the a priori. Devitt’s main contribution in these chapters is the careful critical examination of the best attempts to defend a priori knowledge in logic, mathematics and semantics. The main crux is that such attempts always fail to justify on non- empirical grounds what is said to be known, whereas the naturalist and holistic framework at least promises to help us to find empirical justification for that knowledge. Finally, in chapter 14, Devitt argues that philosophical intuitions should be understood as ‘empirical theory-laden central-processor responses to phenomena differing from many other such judgments only in being immediate’ (p. 294). Such responses do not have any privileged status as often assumed, but they can still play a useful role in helping us to recognise certain important kinds of which we have expertise through acquaintance or because we produce the relevant data. However, when we have identified a kind, intuitions can tell us less about the nature of that kind. At that second stage, we better rely on science. The last chapter applies this understanding of intuitions and their role to the study of the reference-relations. Our intuitions can help us to identify these relations but the question of their nature and scientific usefulness are better left for the empirically-minded linguists and semanticists. This is because there is no reason to assume that the true theory of reference is stored in our minds. Devitt’s aim in this chapter is also to argue that theories of reference cannot be used to determine what there isn’t in the way that eliminativists in various domains have often done when they have relied on descriptivist views of reference. Now for the high praise. Through these articles, Devitt has consistently done more than perhaps anyone else to clarify what is at issue generally in the realism debates and to provide strongest possible defences of realism in a number of different domains. Both realists and antirealists owe him a lot for this important contribution. Devitt’s writing also always moves heavyweight intellectual objects in a way that is always clear, accessible and devoid of any unnecessary jargon or technicalities. I hope that, like his realist views, his style too will continue to influence young philosophers. Finally, here is my concern. In the more recent articles, Devitt recognises that antirealists will in the end accept the same claims about what exists and what is mind- independent (p. 140). The expressivists in metaethics, for example, accept that torturing people is objectively wrong and that this doesn’t depend on what people think about torture. Devitt’s response to this challenge is to claim that there will always be some obviously factual claims about the nature of wrongness and its causal role, which the anti-realist will not be able to accept. She can’t say that Alice is good in virtue of behaving in a certain way or that millions died because Hitler was depraved (p.
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